Cookie 5 8 3 – Protect Your Online Privacy Protection
- Cookie 5 8 3 – Protect Your Online Privacy Protection Privacy
- Cookie 5 8 3 – Protect Your Online Privacy Protection Act
- Cookie 5 8 3 – Protect Your Online Privacy Protections
Since then, rapid changes in technology have raised new privacy challenges, but the FTC’s overall approach has been consistent: The agency uses law enforcement, policy initiatives, and consumer and business education to protect consumers’ personal information and ensure that they have the confidence to take advantage of the many benefits of. Add security info to your account to make it easier to recover your account if it’s hacked. Because this info can help keep your account safe, it's important to keep it up to date. Add or update your security info on the Security basics page. Or, learn more about Security info & security codes and get steps to help protect your account today.
It required privacy policies to either either contain an disclosure, or link to a disclosure on a separate page, detailing how websites responded to the Do Not Track header and 'other mechanisms that provide consumers the ability to exercise choice regarding the collection of personally identifiable information about an individual consumer’s.
Updated September 7, 2020.
Your website is required under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to let users from inside Europe control the activation of cookies and trackers that collect their personal data.
This is the crux of GDPR’s cookie consent – and the future of our digital infrastructures.
In this article, we explain the most important things for you to know when dealing with GDPR and cookies on your website – and show you how Cookiebot solves them all for you.
Quick summary
GDPR cookie consent in brief
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European law that governs all collection and processing of personal data from individuals inside the EU.
Under the GDPR, it is the legal responsibility of website owners and operators to make sure that personal data is collected and processed lawfully.
A website outside of the EU is required to comply with the GDPR if it collects data from users inside the EU.
Although cookies are mentioned only once in the GDPR, cookie consent is nonetheless a cornerstone of compliance for websites with EU-located users.
This is because one of the most common ways for personal data to be collected and shared online is through website cookies. The GDPR sets out specific rules for the use of cookies.
That’s why, under the GDPR, cookie consent is the most frequently used legal basis that allows websites to process personal data and use cookies.
GDPR requires a website to only collect personal data from users after they have given their explicit consent to the specific purposes of its use.
Websites must comply with the following GDPR cookie consent requirements:
- Prior and explicit consent must be obtained before any activation of cookies (apart from whitelisted, necessary cookies).
- Consents must be granular, i.e. users must be able to activate some cookies rather than others and not be forced to consent to either all or none.
- Consent must be freely given, i.e. not allowed to be forced.
- Consents must be as easily withdrawn as they are given.
- Consents must be securely stored as legal documentation.
- Consent must be renewed at least once per year.
Typically, GDPR cookie compliance is achieved on websites through cookie banners that allow users to select and accept certain cookies for activation rather than others, when visiting a site.
GDPR compliant cookie banner by Cookiebot as part of our consent management platform.
The European Data Protection Board’s (EDPB) guidelines from May 2020 clarify what constitutes valid consent on websites in compliance with the GDPR.
EDPB guidelines state that your website’s cookie banner is not allowed to have pre-ticked checkboxes and continued scrolling or browsing by users cannot be considered as valid consent for processing of personal data.
Users must freely give a clear and affirmative action to indicate their consent in order for your website to activate cookies and process personal data.
GDPR cookie compliance test
Test if your website is in compliance with the GDPR’s cookie consent requirements by using Cookiebot’s free compliance test.
Simply enter the URL of your domain and let Cookiebot conduct a free scan of your website to detect all cookies and trackers on the up to five subpages that are included in the free scan, and whether or not you live up to the GDPR’s cookie consent requirements.
Don’t be alarmed to find that your website has a lot more unknown cookies, trackers and trojan horses that you thought – they are notoriously difficult to know of, considering that –
72% of cookies on websites are loaded in secret by other third-party cookies, making them difficult to know of as a website owner.
18% of cookies on websites are trojan horses, i.e. cookies that are hidden as deep as within eight other cookies, making them practically impossible to detect without deep-scanning technology.
50% of trojan horses will have changed between visits, meaning that they can be different cookies altogether, collecting different data for different agents, and making the legal responsibility of the website owner to always inform users of the purpose and duration of cookies a headache from the get-go.
Source: Beyond the Front Page, a 2020 research paper on website cookies.
The Internet's changing landscapes are shaped by your website's cookies and GDPR.
Cookiebot and GDPR cookie compliance
Cookiebot is a plug-and-play consent management platform – a technology developed specifically for the protection of privacy on the Internet, and for your website’s compliance with the world’s data laws.
Cookiebot is made up of an unmatched scanner that detects all cookies and trackers on your domain, and a consent management solution that automatically controls them all and empowers your end-users with granular consent or opt-out solutions, depending on where in the world they are located.
Cookiebot and GDPR cookie consent
When a user from EU visits your website, Cookiebot automatically geotargets their location and presents them with the correct solution for GDPR cookie compliance:
- auto-blocking of all cookies and trackers for prior consent
- granular, explicit consent choice between four categories of cookies
- exhaustive declaration of provider, purpose, duration and type of each cookie
- securely documented user consents
- automatic renewal requests of user consents
Cookiebot's GDPR cookie consent solution that lets users control their own data privacy on your website in full compliance with the GDPR.
Cookiebot’s technology comes with just a few lines of JavaScript on your website, installed directly from the cloud without any need for manual implementation or on-site assistance.
Create your Cookiebot account to get started and let our world-leading consent solution take the hard part out of privacy protection and compliance with GDPR’s cookie consent requirements.
Try Cookiebot free for 30 days… or forever if you have a small website.
With our GDPR cookie consent, Cookiebot works for a private future
The Internet is a changing landscape.
It was built as a flat sandbox but has become an uneven land full of user exploitation and privacy invasion that has remained largely unregulated until now.
In the changing landscapes of the Internet, websites are important ecosystems that Cookiebot help foster balance and protection on.
Your website is a dynamic system that is also constantly changing, and interacting with the personal, private and sometimes intimate data of real, living people. In the whole Internet, your website might seem small and insignificant, just another domain among the billions.
But in fact, your website – whatever its size – can host hundreds of trackers and trojan horses that feed on your users’ private data without their knowledge or consent.
As the Internet has become a fundamental infrastructure in our societies – directing our finances, health industries and our private, social spheres – laws to protect personal data from unconsented collection and use are emerging all around the world.
One of the biggest and most influential data protection laws today is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Learn more about how GDPR cookie compliance works, and how Cookiebot provides the solution to meet all of the GDPR’s cookie consent requirements below.
Try Cookiebot free for 30 days... or forever if you have a small website.
Google Consent Mode and Cookiebot
With Google Consent Mode and Cookiebot, you can make all your website’s Google-services run based on the consent state of your end-users – full GDPR compliance with optimized analytics data and ads revenue through in one simple solution.
Cookiebot manages the consent of your website’s users, then communicate the consent states to the API running Google Consent Mode who then governs all your favorite services (like Google Analytics and Google Ads) based on the consent state of each individual user on your website.
Did a user not consent to statistics or marketing cookies? Cookiebot tells Google Consent Mode which then makes sure that you still get aggregate and non-identifying insights into your website’s performance and the possibility of showing contextual ads instead of targeted ads – respecting user privacy while optimizing your website.
With Cookiebot and Google Consent Mode, get instant and simple GDPR compliance plus optimized analytics data and ads revenue in one solution.
Try Cookiebot free for 30 days – or forever if you have a small website.
GDPR cookie consent in detail
By now, you probably got the whole point about how cookies and GDPR are linked: personal data is protected by the GDPR, and cookies most often collect information that under the GDPR is considered personal data, and so you’re website is required to comply to the GDPR when using cookies.
But what is personal data?
Personal data is any information that relates or can in any way be related to an identified or identifiable living person (known in the law as a “data subject”).
This includes:
- Names
- Home addresses
- E-mails
- Identification card numbers (such as social security, passport etc.)
- Location data (such as geolocation through a phone)
- IP addresses
- Search and browser history
- Health-related and biometric data
- Ethnic information
- Political convictions
- Religious beliefs
- Sexual orientation
The GDPR actually considers the last five points on the checklist above as a special category of personal data called sensitive personal data.
In the rare case that your website processes any of this kind of data, the GDPR requires you to comply with specific processing conditions.
GDPR and cookies: how balanced are these in your website's dynamic system?
Cookie 5 8 3 – Protect Your Online Privacy Protection Privacy
GDPR on cookies
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your end-users’ browsers, as you probably know.
What you might not know is that cookies most often contain an identifier (known as a “Cookie ID”) that is in itself considered personal data under the GDPR.
Yes – under GDPR, cookie IDs are considered personal data.
A cookie ID is the identifier that is included within most cookies when set on a user’s browser. It is a unique ID that allows your website to remember the individual user and their preferences and settings, when they return to your website.
But cookie IDs often follow users around on the Internet and can be used to generate comprehensive profiles on individual people that are then sold to digital advertising agencies and used for behavioral marketing.
Standard third-party cookies from Google that create unique IDs on individual users and track them across platforms.
GDPR requires that your website only collects personal data from your users for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes, and that you obtain their clear and affirmative consent before doing so.
In your everyday work with your website, this GDPR cookie requirement means that you not only need to know what cookies and trackers are in operation on your domain, but also why they are there.
- Where do the cookies come from, i.e. who is their provider?
- What kind of data do the cookies collect or process? Is it personal data? If so, do you make sure to obtain prior consent before they are activated and begin collection?
- What is the purpose of the cookie’s data collection? For lawful personal data collection, legitimate purposes must be stated as part of the information that you give to your end-user, or their consent can be considered invalid.
- What type of cookie or tracker is it? The technical details are important as part of a valid consent, as this is part of the information requirement.
- How long is the cookie active for, i.e. for how long will it be stored on your users’ browsers?
EXAMPLE - cookies and GDPR
Your website uses a plugin from a tech company like Google or Facebook. This could be Google Tag Manager or a comment/like section on one of your subpages from Facebook.
You will now have cookies on your website.
They are third-party cookies because they do not come from your own website but are set on a user’s browser from Google or Facebook.
These cookies will not be necessary cookies, i.e. not white-listed and exempt from the GDPR, but rather will need the explicit consent of users before your website is allowed to activate them.
Even though these third-party cookies come from companies like Google or Facebook, the legal responsibility for GDPR cookie compliance is still yours as the website owner.
Granular consent, different cookies and GDPR
By know you probably have no doubt – yes, your website has cookies, GDPR requires you to control them and you’re looking to become compliant.
But very likely your website has more than one type of cookie. This is important, as the GDPR cookie requirements are different for the different types of cookies and tracking technologies in use on the Internet.
The EU’s data protection legal regime has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as its basis, but is also made up of legal precedents like the case of Planet49, the ePrivacy directive on electronic communications (EU cookie law), and guidelines from both national data protection agencies and the European Board of Data Protection (EDPB).
Altogether, they form the specific requirements that websites who have users from inside Europe must comply with today.
The sum of this legal regime is that in the EU, consent must be given by users in an explicit, unambiguous way; their consent must be granular; their consent must be given freely and their consent must not be nudged or given in return of services.
Your website is a dynamic system that must balance the GDPR and use of cookies at the same time.
Full GDPR cookie compliance means that your website must –
- Know of all cookies and trackers in operation,
- Inform users of cookies and their duration, purpose and provider,
- Offer users a choice of granular consent, i.e. the possibility of activating some cookies rather than others on your website,
- Enable users to withdraw their consent as easily as they gave it,
- Document all consents in a secure and encrypted fashion,
- Ask for renewed consent at least once every 12 months.
For your website, this means that you need to enable your end-users to choose between the different types of cookies your website has.
In compliance with the GDPR, cookies fall into four categories on Cookiebot’s consent management platform –
- Necessary cookies that are most often your website’s own (first party) and important to have activated at all times in order for your domain to function properly. These will most often be session cookies that only last as long as the user’s visit to your site. Only strictly necessary cookies can be white-listed to be exempt from GDPR cookie consent.
- Preference cookies that remember user choices such as language settings or currency on your website.
- Statistics cookies that most often come from third-party services such as analytics software that you implement on your website.
- Marketing cookies that almost always come from third-party tech or ad companies for the purpose of serving advertisement to your users or collect personal data from them for future marketing purposes.
Under the GDPR, cookies that are not strictly necessary for the basic function of your website must only be activated after your end-users have given their explicit consent to the specific purpose of their operation and collection of personal data.
With Cookiebot’s deep-scanning technology, all your website’s cookies will be detected, and their technical details explained to you and your users in a simple cookie declaration that provides all the required information for full GDPR cookie compliance.
And with Cookiebot’s plug and play consent management platform, your website will always be informing its users with accurate and updated information on how it collects and shares their personal data.
Try Cookiebot free for 30 days… or forever if you have a small website.
Cookie policy and GDPR
Your website needs to have a cookie policy that is easily accessible for your end-users.
Under the GDPR, a cookie policy must inform users of –
- What information you collect
- What you do with their information
- How you protect their information
- If you disclose any information to third parties
- How you store their information
- How users may access, migrate, request rectrification, restriction or deletion of information
Cookiebot automatically generates a cookie declaration for your website once it has scanned your domain.
This forms the basis of your cookie policy, as it contains most of the information that is required by the GDPR in a cookie policy.
A GDPR cookie policy can easily be integrated with your website’s existing privacy policy.
See Cookiebot’s own Cookie Declaration and Privacy Policy for examples on how to draft your website’s own and what information you need to include.
A cookie policy is a dynamic thing, since your website is a dynamic system. Cookies change and so must your cookie policy.
Cookiebot’s automatically generated cookie declaration ensures that your cookie policy is always up to date. This will save you considerable amounts of time spent on drafting and keeping it updated yourself.
Cookiebot and GDPR cookie compliance
All right, you made it to the end of a long article on GDPR and cookie consent. Way to go!
Cookiebot has been in operation since 2014 and is a matured technology that ensures compliance with the EU’s GDPR and similar data protection laws around the world through our unmatched scanning technology and consent management solution. Our technology takes the hard part out of compliance and privacy protection.
Everyone at Cookiebot works every day to make privacy protection a simple and smooth solution today to guarantee a human future on our digital infrastructures tomorrow.
Sign up to Cookiebot today and try free for 30 days… or forever if your website has less than 100 subpages.
Protect user privacy on the ever-changing digital landscapes with Cookiebot for a compliant balance between GDPR and cookies.
FAQ
What is GDPR?
GDPR is an EU data protection law that governs the collection of personal data from individuals inside the European Union. If your website has cookies that collect personal data from users inside EU, you a liable for compliance. GDPR requires that you obtain the explicit consent of your website’s user before any activation of cookies and personal data collection is allowed to take place.
Cookie 5 8 3 – Protect Your Online Privacy Protection Act
What is GDPR cookie consent?
GDPR cookie consent is when users give their informed, explicit, unambiguous consent to which cookies on your website they will allow to be activated and collect their personal data, while visiting your site. A compliant GDPR cookie consent must be granular, i.e. users must be able to choose some cookies rather than others and not be forced to simply accept or reject all.
What is a GDPR compliant cookie banner?
A GDPR compliant cookie banner is an interactive module that informs your users of all cookies and trackers in operation on your website, their purpose, duration and provider, and enables users to give their explicit consent to some, none or all cookies by ticking boxes or sliding controls and pressing a button. It is vital for GDPR compliance that cookie banners do not have pre-ticked checkboxes or forces users into a choice of accepting all or none in return for services.
What is cookie policy under GDPR?
A GDPR compliant cookie policy informs your users of what data your website collects, what purposes you use this data for, which third parties you share their data with, who is the provider of the cookies, how you store their data and ensure its protection, and how users may access, migrate, request rectification or deletion of their data. Your website’s cookie policy must be written in an easy-to-understand language and be easily accessible for your users.